It was a conflict for some Mac lovers when Apple unveiled its iPhone 3G S this month: drool over the newest gadget, or riot over the fact that they couldn't have it for cheap? Apple and AT&T, it seems, didn't provide a way for existing iPhone 3G users to upgrade to the newest model at a reasonable price. Instead, they'd have to pay $399 while new users pay $199.

Irate iPhone owners blogged, Tweeted and trash-talked, all in an effort to get Apple to stop "ripping us off." More than 4,000 signed an online petition.

The strategy appears to have worked. AT&T said today that customers who are eligible for an upgrade any time between now and the end of September, and who spend at least $99 a month in service fees per phone line, can get the 3G S for the same price as new buyers starting tomorrow online, or Friday at its physical stores.

Previously, only those who had owned their iPhones for 12 to 18 months would have qualified for the "best upgrade price" -- $199 for the 16-gigabyte version or $299 for the 32-gigabyte phone.

If you don't fall into any of those categories, you're out of luck for now. AT&T offers you some not-so-exciting options. You can pay $599 for a 16-gigabyte model or $699 for a 32-gigabyte model without having to sign a two-year contract, or wait until you're eligible for better upgrade pricing.

Don't shoot the messenger, AT&T says, as it's actually losing money by listening to its customers.

"Like most U.S. carriers, we offer a variety of phones that we sell below our actual cost when customers agree to sign service agreements. In general, the more a customer spends with us, the quicker they become eligible for a price break on a new device," the company explained.

Will this be enough to assuage angry early adopters?

-- Alana Semuels

Advertising spending may have fallen 12% in the first quarter, but Microsoft doesn't seem to know there's a slowdown. Soon after it unveiled a massive campaign for its new search engine, Bing, which features people yelling about back pain and the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, it's unveiling a new ad -- for Internet Explorer 8.

This commercial, produced by Indiana ad agency Bradley and Montgomery, stars actor and onetime Superman Dean Cain as a confused intellectual in a public service announcement trying to help overweight women share pictures of lolcats.

They're not only showing us ads to persuade us to download IE 8. Microsoft also says that if people download the browser through BrowserForTheBetter.com, the company will donate eight meals to Feeding America.

So what's so great about this new browser that's motivating Microsoft to pay for yet another TV ad in a time when advertising isn't so popular?

It gives us a new feature called Accelerators, which allow you to, say, check out a map of a location without opening a new window. It allows us to comparison shop using a search bar and restore recently closed tabs. It crashes less frequently (we'll have to see about that one).

The new features in IE 8 "accelerate the task at hand with fewer clicks and less frustration, blurring the lines between services and browser," Microsoft says in a white paper you can download on its IE site.

Now why didn't they say that in the ad?

-- Alana Semuels

Cellphones -- the new boob tube? Credit: masochismtango via Flickr.

You are by now perhaps a little sick about hearing about the digital TV transition that will take place Friday. The country isn't prepared, televisions will be thrown away, dozens of people won't be able to watch "Days of Our Lives" anymore. And so on.

But for San Diego-based Qualcomm, Friday marks a big opportunity. It's the day the company can finally flip the switch on FLO TV, its expensive and long-awaited mobile TV service that will broadcast about a dozen channels to mobile devices so addicts can watch live shows on their phones.

As a story in today's Times outlines, though, FLO TV may or may not be what one observer calls "one of the colossal business mistakes of the first decade of 2000." That's because Qualcomm spent more than $800 million to build a service that's available now on only nine models and only on Verizon and AT&T.

What's more, as the Open Mobile Video Coalition, a group of broadcasters developing their own standard, gets its act together, FLO TV will have a competitor that offers live TV -- for free. (Of course, they'll need to get phones optimized for the ATSC standard, which no phones in the market are, says Debra Kaufman, who blogs about the topic at MobilizedTV).

Both groups see a future in which we'll be able to access live TV in our cars, on our computers and on virtually any screen we can carry with us, all thanks to the spectrum freed up by the digital transition.

So maybe some people who rely on analog signals will be watching a lot less TV after Friday, but odds are many of us will be eventually watching a lot more. Maybe it's all part of the master plan explained by Alec Baldwin to turn our brains into mush. Or a way to get us even more dependent on our cellphones.

--Alana Semuels

Online advertising was hurting in Q1. Credit: Pascale Pirate Chicken via Flickr.

Remember when Internet marketers said they'd be immune to the recession because online advertising is more accountable? Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way.

Internet advertising revenue was $5.5 billion for the first quarter of 2009, a 5% decline from the same period last year, according to a report released this morning from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The 10% decline from the fourth quarter, when revenue surpassed $6 billion for the first time, is the biggest decrease, percentage-wise, since at least 2001.

"The first quarter was really freak-out time this year," said Jose Villa, founder of Sensis, a Los Angeles interactive ad agency. "Everybody just slammed on the brakes."

Companies were deciding whether they should even advertise, he said, because they thought it might look bad to be spending on marketing in a tough economic climate.

"It was an unusual three-month period," he said. "It wasn’t really rational, and it went across all media."

By the second quarter, people started cautiously spending again, he said, indicating the next numbers  from the advertising bureau shouldn't be so scary. At least, that's what the IAB is hoping.

"Interactive media continues to gain share of marketing spend," Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, said in a statement. "We're confident that growth will resume as the U.S. economic climate improves."

-- Alana Semuels

The Palm Pre isn't just for Sprint anymore. Credit: renaissancechambara via Flickr.

The Palm Pre, the device that was pegged to save both Palm and Sprint Nextel, will soon be available on Verizon Wireless, CEO Lowell McAdam said today. Verizon plans to market both the Pre, which will initially be available only on the Sprint Nextel network, and a new version of the BlackBerry Storm early next year. That's not great news for Sprint, which needs the Pre to keep it from losing more customers. 

"It's an incremental blow to Sprint," said Steve Clement, a senior research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. Verizon subscribers who were thinking of switching to Sprint to try the Pre might just wait until next year, rather than jumping ship, he said.

Sprint has been struggling to reduce churn, an industry term for the subset of customers who leave one carrier for another. It lost nearly 5 million customers last year to rival carriers. 

"Sprint will have this device exclusively through at least the end of 2009," said Kathleen Dunleavy, a Sprint spokeswoman. "Beginning on June 6, customers can purchase the Pre only through Sprint. Sprint was chosen as the exclusive provider due to the power of its network, the fantastic value our offerings provide and our commitment to a great customer experience."

Sprint's most important goal with the Pre is to keep existing customers from going to other carriers such as AT&T, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at research firm Collins Stewart. This announcement won't hurt that goal, he said.

But Palm has had trouble producing enough devices to meet demand. Best Buy has already said it will probably run out of stock when it goes on sale this summer.  

"Palm thus far has been misexecuting on the production side," he said. If the device is a flop, or gets lampooned by consumers, neither Sprint nor Palm will benefit.

Sprint's stock was up 1% at $5.13 at 12:12 PDT today. Palm was up 9% at $11.49.

--Alana Semuels

Is the Kutcher-Twitter love affair coming to an end?. Credit: dpstyles via Flickr

-- Microsoft says the Zune HD, a touch-screen rival to the iPod, will be out this fall. Boy Genius Report

-- The worldwide recession has created dozens of hot young start-ups in India. AP via LAT

-- Ashton Kutcher threatens to sign off Twitter if the microblogging service partners with a reality TV show. CNN

-- Blockbuster will launch an online video game rental service to better compete with Netflix. Silicon Alley Insider

-- A former TV evangelist buys AmericanLife, a Christian cable network. AP via LAT

-- Twitter's founders say they're planning to stay with the company for the long haul. Bits

-- Time Warner will reportedly decide at a board meeting Thursday whether to spin off AOL. TechCrunch

-- Nokia's app store has a terrible first day, crashing and getting routinely mocked. USA Today

-- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, knows a thing or two about computers and technology. Wired

-- Alana Semuels

A note to readers: We're playing around a little with the format of the Tech Blog, so this will be the last day of Around the Web -- for now. Instead, you'll see more short posts referring you to other blogs' takes on interesting tech stories of the day. If you love that idea -- or hate it -- feel free to e-mail us with your concerns. You can find our contact information by clicking on our names in the panel in the right-hand side of the page titled Our Bloggers.

They must be relatives of the wolves on Three Wolf Moon T-shirt. Credit: star5112 via Flickr.

When it comes to T-shirts, ugly is in the eye of the beholder. You might love your human anatomy T-shirt that shows guts, while your girlfriend might be more partial to the bright orange behemoth she bought to wear to the Lakers game.

But it's hard to dispute that the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt would be at the top of anyone's ugly list. It shows three wolves howling at a moon that is tinged by some sort of green fog, which could just be wolf halitosis. Which is why it's a little surprising that it's the top apparel item on Amazon right now. It's been one of the top 100 bestselling Amazon apparel items for 18 days now. It even beat out Crocs and an ugly baby yoga T-shirt!

The shirt, made by a New Hampshire company called the Mountain, rocked to popularity after reviewers mock-plugged the shirt.

"After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women," one wrote. Another, who also gave it five stars, commented that "Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather." A third wrote that after he wore the shirt, he was more popular with the ladies and that he could "expect to be promoted to cashier soon."

Nearly 500 people have reviewed the shirt thus far, with 374 giving five-star reviews. Some bemoaned that five was not enough stars.

The Mountain at first wasn't sure what to make of the comments.

"Some say: 'Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. We however disagree if it's at the expense of others in a Classist, Racist or Prejudice manner,' " it wrote in a posting on Amazon.

It seems to have capitalized on the reviews since then, though. Its website boasts that it's the home of the "hottest shirt on-line." Mountain promises a Four Wolf Moon T-shirt is coming soon. Whether sales of other products, such as the shirt picturing a dragon wrapped around a tree, or the one showing Native Americans with their faces painted with stars and strips, have skyrocketed too is unclear.

It makes you wonder though -- who would buy a T-shirt just because it's accompanied by an ironic review? Those who bought the shirt also looked at Zubaz striped pants and a tube of Uranium Ore, according to Amazon. Maybe these people just appreciate strange things. Ugliness is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.

-- Alana Semuels

Would you want to hear her talking on the phone on your plane? Credit: adria-richards via Flickr.

Wireless on airplanes is getting its 15 minutes of fame today, when Oprah makes a call on her show to a Virgin America flight attendant who will be on a plane in the air.

There's a catch, though -- and no, it's not that everyone on the flight will get free cars. Oprah is calling the plane using Skype, the voice-over-Internet protocol service that allows you to make calls over a computer. And Aircell, the WiFi provider, doesn't actually allow passengers to use VoIP, including Skype, on any of its flights.

"We made an exception just for Oprah," said Arianne Venuso, an Aircell spokeswoman. Aircell, which is expanding to dozens of American Airlines and Virgin America planes this summer,  works by transmitting a signal from cell towers around the country to small antennas installed on the planes.

Technically, you could make phone calls with the service, and you could easily make VoIP calls over a service such as Skype. But the airlines have all request that VoIP service be blocked, Venuso said.

"The airlines know that their passengers don’t want to hear people talking on the phone," she said.

But what if that person is Oprah?

-- Alana Semuels

The Palm Pre has a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard. Credit: whatleydude via Flickr

It's hee-eere. Well, almost. Sprint and Palm said this morning that the Palm Pre would be available in Sprint stores, Best Buy, RadioShack, some Wal-Mart stores and online June 6. It will cost $199.99 after a mail-in rebate. The subsidized price requires a two-year contract and a data plan that starts at $69.99 a month.

The Pre has both a touchscreen and a keyboard, which Palm hopes will be an advantage over other phones that have one or the other. It is compatible with Touchstone, a $69.99 wireless charger that allows you to charge the device by just placing it on the charger, rather than plugging it in.

The highly anticipated iPhone competitor is Palm's attempt to regain market share after stumbling and losing its leading position, first with the Palm Pilot and then with the Palm Treo. The Treo, introduced in 2002, was a cutting-edge device at the time, but Palm spun off its operating system to another company and wasn't able to update the device quickly enough to keep it competitive, according to analyst Tavis McCourt at Morgan Keegan.

In the first quarter of 2006, Palm’s operating system had a 40% share of all smartphone devices in the U.S., compared with BlackBerry’s 28%, according to Nielsen. By the first quarter of 2009, Palm’s share had fallen to 10%, while BlackBerry's grew to 36% and Apple’s grew from zilch to 21%, thanks to the iPhone.

The Pre runs on WebOS, Palm's new operating system that ...

... the company says will change the way we live and work.

"Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly," Sprint said in the release this morning.

WebOS allows you to run different applications at the same time, which gives it an advantage over the iPhone. It also allows you to reply to e-mails and social networking profiles through one interface.

Still, for all the hoopla, there's a chance it might not take with consumers, which would mean trouble for both Palm and Sprint, the wireless carrier that has consistently lost customers every quarter.

“This is an opportunity for Palm to invigorate itself and become a serious contender,” said Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst with Nielsen. If it doesn’t, he said, “that could mean the end of the road for Palm.”

Some analysts were hoping for a lower price point to make the device more attractive to consumers than the iPhone. And with AT&T rumored to announce a lower-priced data plan for the iPhone soon, Sprint's $69.99 data plan could end up being too high.

Palm also will have to attract developers to make the Pre as application-heavy as the iPhone, which touts its panoply of apps in its commercials. WebOS is a simple interface, said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research, which means people who can develop for websites can easily develop for the Pre. But the question remains if they will.

And that, said Los Angeles developer Anthony Phills, will largely depend on how many people buy the Pre. He's made apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, and has applied to develop an Amber Alert app for the Pre. He looks at how popular each device is before deciding to develop for it, he said.

And despite the uncertainty about the Pre, he thinks the Palm gadget will do well enough to make an application for it worthwhile.

"Palm has so many loyal customers from before," he said.

-- Alana Semuels

Food from the Kogi BBQ truck is sold with the help of Twitter. Credit: inuyaki.com via Flickr

-- Those "secret questions" you answer to help you remember the password to your 8 million Internet accounts might not be so secret after all. Technology Review

-- New phones and operating systems have cellphone makers hoping for a big summer. NYT

-- Small businesses that use Twitter often have good results, boosting daily sales at one pizza joint 15%. Ad Age

-- Facebook apps might make more money than Facebook in 2009. Silicon Alley Insider

-- OpenTable goes public this week, in one of the first Silicon Valley IPOs in a loooong time. BoomTown

-- People spend more time on social networks than they do e-mailing. NYT

-- Soldiers are using online dating sites to meet members of the opposite sex, sometimes while stationed abroad. USA Today

-- Workers at Chinese search engine Baidu decide to end a strike for now. PaidContent

-- Google's Eric Schmidt gave the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon on Sunday. TechCrunch

-- The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a site that changes the prices of tickets based on demand. NYT

-- Alana Semuels

When will we break free of wires forever?. Credit: XWRN via Flickr

If you're like the typical geek, you probably spend a decent amount of time on your couch with your cellphone plugged into one wall socket, your computer plugged into another, your iPod plugged into your computer and your camera plugged in somewhere else. Mamma Mia!

Wouldn't it be nice if someone super smart figured out a way to charge devices without all those wires, much in the same way that Bluetooth technology allows you to talk on your phone from across the room?

There are a number of companies that will tell you -- in press releases and photos -- that they've come up with such a device. One of the big selling points of the Palm Pre, the new wunderphone coming out soon, is that it can charge "wirelessly" with a new Touchstone wireless charger. Photos show a wire-free charger where you can just set down your phone and it will magically be charged.

Impressive, sure: Palm is apparently the first cellphone company making a big push on inductive chargers, which are the same kind that charge electric toothbrushes. But beware the word "wireless." Although the photos don't show it, the Touchstone still has to be plugged into a wall, and the phone has to be touching the charging dock. So if you were envisioning some sort of charger that would give more juice to your phone as you walked around the room -- or even entered the bathroom -- your dream is dashed for now. You're still wedded to the wall.

Same with the Case-Mate FUEL for the Blackberry Bold and iPod, a carrying case and phone charger which shouted out to me from my e-mail inbox this morning, "You can now avoid being tethered to the wall when your battery's down to one bar." Well, kind of. The FUEL is not a charger, per se, but an extra battery pack powered by a rechargeable lithium polymer battery.

So will we ever be able to break our cords to wall outlets and roam freely around while still charging our devices?

Yes, says John Shearer, the founder of Powercast, a Pittsburgh company that is working on a technology that sends power wirelessly to low-power devices. As phones require less and less power, he said, the technology is getting more powerful. He doesn't see the technology becoming mainstream for another five years, however.

"It takes a long time for big companies to adopt new technology," he said. Cellphone makers, for instance, have to build phones that can use this type of charging. Currently, he said, you couldn't just go to a store and buy this type of charger to work on any devices.

In the meantime, Shearer said, other wireless chargers will have to do. As long as you realize they're not truly wireless, no matter what the pictures show.

"Don't believe those photo-shopped photos," he said.

-- Alana Semuels

Google fails, the world panics. Credit: star5112 via Flickr.

Imagine your 20 favorite people. Now imagine that three of them had their hands chopped off. Aaaargh!

That's kind of what happened to, well, the world this morning when Google went down or performed excruciatingly slowly for 14% of users. People panicked. They tried to figure out what was going on. They complained. Even in German!

If you still can't imagine three of your 20 friends missing their hands, maybe this chart will illuminate the situation. Traffic from the top 10 North American Internet service providers to Google networks fell off a cliff, showing that if people can't Google, they're not as interested in the Web.

Thankfully, Google restored its services after just an hour or so, blaming Asia for the outage.

The blog post by Urs Hoelzle apologized for the outage, reassuring addicted Google users that "all planes are back on schedule now."

-- Alana Semuels

Intel gets slapped with a record fine. Credit: Axel Buhrmann via Flickr

-- European regulators fine Intel $1.45 billion for trying to discourage customers from working with competitor AMD. LAT

-- AT&T speaks on its decision to remove 3G streaming capability from the iPhone SlingPlayer app. Engadget

-- Verizon sells 15% of its residential and small business phone lines to Frontier so it can focus on bigger cities. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Women's blog network BlogHer raises $7 million despite difficult times for fundraising. PaidContent

-- Google unveils new features at a big event it calls Searchology. LAT

-- After Kanye West complains, Twitter removes a fake account under his name. Silicon Alley Insider

-- France adopts a plan to kick people off the Internet if they are found to pirate content three times. NYT

-- Twitter changes its reply system after new users are confused. TechCrunch

-- Our obsession with gadgets could triple the world's electronic bills in the next two decades. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Love the Star Trek movie? Check out where parts were filmed in these exotic California locations. Wired

-- Alana Semuels

Is this bacteria on your phone? Credit: kaibara87 via Flickr

Well, it's official. It's probably not a good idea to lick your cellphone.

Those of you who are paused in mid-lick, angrily wondering what kind of scientific data we have to back this up, beware: a consultant over at KTLA found that 10 out of 11 phones in its newsroom had bacteria all over them.

OK, OK, maybe you like bacteria. But the consultant, Dennis Ironi, found enough staphylococcus, micrococcus and bacillus to potentially make you sick. All three are rather nasty-looking under a microscope, and species of each can cause food poisoning and other illnesses.

Ironi says the bacteria are often transmitted when you let other people use your phone, because obviously other people are less clean that you are.

According to KTLA, a recent study in Britain found that cellphones were dirtier, germ-wise, than toilets and the bottom of your shoe. (Just to be safe, you probably shouldn't lick the toilet or the bottom of your shoe either.)

And if you're going to start licking your keyboard now that cellphones, shoes and toilets are off limits, just know that environmental expert Michael Andrew says that you touch about 10 million bacteria every time you put your hands on your desk. So don't lick that either.

-- Alana Semuels

Twiistup is a big bash for L.A.'s tech community. Credit: Mike Macadaan via Flickr

It helped software developers find jobs, attracted investors to Los Angeles and once featured a giant talking pickle.

Now Twiistup, the event created by entrepreneur Mike Macadaan to showcase the L.A. tech community, has been sold to an undisclosed private investor so it can further expand. Tech communities in places such as Colorado, Florida and Switzerland have written Macadaan asking for his help in creating a Twiistup of their own.

“It’s really helped unify the community,” Macadaan said. “Now we want to expand the energy and excitement here to another level.”

Twiistup, which launched in February 2007, showcases promising start-ups at a twice-annual bash that has been a change from more conventional technology meet-up events. Each iteration attracted more people, eventually drawing visitors from San Francisco, New York and London. At one Twiistup, a giant pickle ran through the room as a surprise. At another, blogger Perez Hilton dropped in to say hello. Each event featured alcohol, music and, of course, networking.

“I hear all the time about people getting their dream jobs there, people meeting investors who would give them a round of funding,” Macadaan said.

It also united a growing Los Angeles tech community, drawing more attention to the entrepreneurial activity going on here. The investor hopes to tap into that excitement, Macadaan said. He declined to disclose the price.

"Other communities look to us as role models" for how to create a vibrant tech scene, said Nicole Jordan, a Twiistup community consultant. That's partially because of the grass-roots popularity of Twiistup, she said, which often sells out weeks in advance.

Twiistup showoffs, which are start-ups selected to set up booths at the event and talk about their companies, have included YellowBot, Goodreads.com and Meebo. One, a company called Mint, later won a $50,000 award from tech blog TechCrunch for being the best presenting company at a start-up event.

Los Angeles entrepreneur Francisco Dao will now run day-to-day operations of Twiistup. Macadaan said he's planning to focus more on Tsavo Media, a Santa Monica start-up founded by MySpace's new chief operating officer, Mike Jones.

-- Alana Semuels

The Kindle DX. Credit: Amazon.

Now you can read newspapers, textbooks and PDFs -- all for just $489!

That's because Amazon.com unveiled the third iteration of Kindle, its digital book reader, at a press conference in New York today helmed by CEO Jeff Bezos. Called Kindle DX, the device features a 9.7-inch screen, compared with 6 inches in the previous model, and the capability to store 3,500 books, up from the previous model's 1,500.

Being a digital bookworm doesn't come cheap, though. The $489 price tag is quite a bit higher than that of the $359 Kindle 2. The Kindle DX costs more than some netbook computers and as much as some big-screen TVs.

But it's a small price to pay for saving the newspaper industry, right? Amazon announced partnerships with the New York Times Co. and Washington Post Co. to deliver the New York Times, Boston Globe (if it's still around) and Washington Post on the Kindle DX to readers outside their subscription areas. They have to sign up for a long-term subscription to the newspapers to be eligible for the deal.

"We will extend our reach to our loyal readers who will more readily be able to enjoy their favorite newspapers," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Co., said in a release.

Other new features include a PDF reader and auto-rotation so that the Kindle can be read in portrait or landscape mode. It's one-third of an inch thick and has 3.3 GB of memory. The device is expected to ship this summer.

Amazon also struck a deal with colleges including Princeton University and the University of Virginia to make Kindle DX available to students this fall. The new model is more suited for reading textbooks, Amazon says.

Updated, 12:10 p.m.: Here's the take on the Kindle DX by Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times' books blog, Jacket Copy.

-- Alana Semuels

The robot: your newest Facebook friend? Credit: peyri via Flickr.

-- South Carolina's attorney general tells Craigslist to remove prostitution ads or face criminal penalties. CNet

-- As expected, Amazon unveils its Kindle 3.0 at a news conference in New York. AllThingsD

-- The Sirius XM Radio iPhone app shows that satellite radio isn't just for cars anymore. WSJ

-- RIM's co-CEO wants his own NHL team, the Coyotes. Reuters

-- Free iPhone apps can still make money for their creators. TechCrunch

-- DailyCandy CEO Pete Sheinbaum leaves less than a year after he sells the business to Comcast. PaidContent

-- Librarians are worried that Google's settlement with publishers might make books too expensive. Ars Technica

-- The Pentagon might create a cyber-command that would protect its computer networks. Washington Post

-- A robot gets its own Facebook page to foster meaningful relationships with humans. Because so many meaningful relationships are developed over Facebook. BBC

-- Alana Semuels

Intel's new ad campaign seeks to make consumers more familiar with the brand. Credit: Intel.

You may not know it, but Intel pioneered the microprocessor, invented the USB standard and helped build Silicon Valley into the thriving tech powerhouse it is today.

You'll likely know all that and more soon enough: Intel is about to launch "Sponsors of Tomorrow," a massive advertising campaign in more than two dozen countries that seeks to make people more familiar with the chip maker's brand.

"We want people, when they decide they need a new laptop, to make sure they're going to look at Intel inside," said Nancy Bhagat, director of integrated marketing at Intel. She said the Santa Clara, Calif., company hopes consumers will be as insistent about Intel products in their electronics as people once were about NutraSweet in their diet drinks.

Intel says the campaign is its first to focus on its overall brand rather than specific processors or products. The ads will appear on TV, billboards, the Web and ...

... in print beginning Monday. One component will allow consumers to send text messages that will appear on a digital billboard in New York's Times Square and other locations throughout the world.

Bhagat said that while Intel was an "ingredient brand," meaning it doesn't sell its products directly to consumers, the company felt that it was still important to tout its role in the history of innovation. About 85% of PCs sold today have Intel products inside, dwarfing the number of those with chips from smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices.

In one Intel spot, called "Rock Stars," two actors play engineers who invented the first microprocessor. When they walk across the company cafeteria, everyone gapes at them as if they are big celebrities. In another, titled "Oops," employees and reporters struggle to find a tiny chip on the floor, joking about the fact that Intel's big ideas are often very small in size. And in a third, "Clean Room," a girl bragging about her neat room has nothing on Intel's so-called clean rooms, the areas in which computer circuits are made and assembled; they're 10,000 times cleaner than a hospital operating room.

Despite the global economic woes, Intel plans to boost its advertising spending with this campaign, Bhagat said. "Investing in a recession gives us an opportunity to be more visible and drive a stronger share of mind," she said.

The campaign was created by Venables Bell & Partners, of San Francisco, which is a new agency for Intel.

-- Alana Semuels

Customers liked the BlackBerry Curve in the first quarter. Credit: Marvin Kuo via Flickr

Apple, you've been temporarily unseated. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Curve was the best-selling consumer smartphone in the first quarter, according to industry research firm The NPD Group. Apple's iPhone came in second, but two other BlackBerry models -- the Storm and the Pearl -- were right behind, in third and fourth place.

RIM's consumer smartphone market share increased by 15% percent, to 50%, in the quarter, as Apple's share dropped by 10%.

NPD attributes the change in rankings to aggressive Verizon Wireless ad campaigns that pitched the BlackBerry Storm and a BOGO (that's buy one, get one) on BlackBerrys.

"The more familiar and less expensive Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers," Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, said in a report.

A lesson there: It can be an advantage not to be tied to one carrier, especially if customers complain loudly about said carrier.

Palm probably doesn't want to hear that. It's set to launch the Pre, its answer to the iPhone, soon, potentially in two weeks. The Pre will be available exclusively on Sprint Nextel. Palm's share of the smartphone market declined 10% in the first quarter, according to NPD.

Of course, these rankings change all the time. The Curve could get more of a foothold because AT&T announced today the availability of a new BlackBerry Curve -- the 8900, which it says is the thinnest QWERTY BlackBerry keyboard yet and has a faster Internet connection.

But it's possible the iPhone could shoot back up again if Verizon Wireless gets the iPhone. Or maybe that will make it slip more. Or maybe everyone everywhere will buy the Pre, and there will be a new addition to the top five. It's anyone's game.

-- Alana Semuels

This class is pledging to go without texting, Facebook and other modern essentials. Credit: Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times.

— Google’s settlement with publishers over its Book Search leads to an antitrust inquiry, insiders say. NYT

— College admissions officers are looking at students’ social networking pages to make decisions about admission and financial aid. LAT

— A class in an L.A. high school tries to go a week totally unplugged. Can they handle it? LAT

— Nielson Online says that 60% of Twitter users quit after a month. Will Oprah be one of the quitters? Silicon Alley Insider

— An Egyptian blogger tries social activism over Facebook. Results are mixed. LAT

— Palm might premiere the Pre the day before Apple announces a new version of the iPhone. MobileCrunch

— AOL ad revenue drops 20%, and Time Warner says it plans to spin off the Internet company. Bloomberg via LAT

— But its content business — Media Glow — is expanding. Journalists, take note. Silicon Alley Insider

— IAC buys the company that makes the popular iPhone app UrbanSpoon. TechCrunch

— ESPN.com is taken over by pink dancing unicorns and glittery ponies. Just what men love. Deadspin

— Alana Semuels